While I agree with the general point, I think this part:
(The TSA spends 5.3 billion on airline security annually. It’s difficult to put a price on 9/11, but quick googling says that total insurance payouts were $40 billion. So very roughly, the utilitarian question is whether the TSA stops a 9/11-scale attack every 8 years.)
is rather poorly phrased in a way that detracts from the overall message. I don’t think this accurately captures either the costs of the TSA (many of which come in the form of lost time waiting in security or of poorly-defined costs to privacy) or the costs of 9/11 (even if we accept that the insurance payouts adequately capture the cost of lives lost, injuries, disruption, etc. there are lots of extra...let’s call them ‘geopolitical costs’).
I agree—I would want to account for stress from going thru TSA, a better accounting of life lost, etc. Unfortunately, a better analysis would have taken up a lot more space and perhaps been a post in itself. But I’m curious to see your analysis if you think you can produce one.
My internal reasoning is more like “look, any way you run the numbers, so long as you’re reasonably fair, it aint gunna work out” but that’s not exactly an argument, just a strongly held intuition.
While I agree with the general point, I think this part:
is rather poorly phrased in a way that detracts from the overall message. I don’t think this accurately captures either the costs of the TSA (many of which come in the form of lost time waiting in security or of poorly-defined costs to privacy) or the costs of 9/11 (even if we accept that the insurance payouts adequately capture the cost of lives lost, injuries, disruption, etc. there are lots of extra...let’s call them ‘geopolitical costs’).
I agree—I would want to account for stress from going thru TSA, a better accounting of life lost, etc. Unfortunately, a better analysis would have taken up a lot more space and perhaps been a post in itself. But I’m curious to see your analysis if you think you can produce one.
My internal reasoning is more like “look, any way you run the numbers, so long as you’re reasonably fair, it aint gunna work out” but that’s not exactly an argument, just a strongly held intuition.